


We Will Never Be Here Again

by storyteller_of_sanssouci



Category: Original Work
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:00:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22589788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storyteller_of_sanssouci/pseuds/storyteller_of_sanssouci
Summary: A memorial poem for someone I knew.For H.H. (2002-2017)
Kudos: 2





	We Will Never Be Here Again

My name is long forgotten, good. Good that it be so!

He dragg’d my name, my honour through mud

It was surely time my epic came to a close.

Lethe only seems to wash over my mind,

Only remembering with Cocytus, the times that were fine.

But when I remember, with the Styx and Phlegethon I row,

And finally, into Acheron, I weep pointlessly o’er my only foe.

*

Stop telling me tales of someone who remembers me; Who would even care?

I have no one left to save me, no one! I will willingly continue to despair.

Why waste another’s life, a fulfilled, bless’d life, on I?

To say I am worth their fragile, unique love is simply one of your lies.

I never saved a soul; I never loved a soul…but yet you said I did

I did it for a reason, but only to be of my Paris forever rid!

It was wonderful, exhilarating to be rid of life! it was merely time.

I am glad I forgot my name O so long ago; It was never mine.

~*~

It’s funny the first time I felt as if my breath was stolen from me…yet I was still here. There. Somewhere at least. I had the comfort of knowing I was still on some plane of existence. I didn’t know exactly who I was when I still had the ability to breathe and truly feel, but I knew one thing- I was a poet. Or at least, to put it nicely, an _aspiring_ poet.

I wrote those very verses one night. Or was it day? When I was still there, the sky never changed from its particular shade of grey. I should have thought that this grey, moody sky was a bad omen at the time, but I didn’t. I found peace in the unknown I was trapped in.

Suddenly, I found myself presented in an opportunity to desert the Asphodel Meadows I had been trapped in for…however long since that November had been. I should have been embarrassed not to know how and when I had died at the time, but my mind had been consumed by the Lethe, or so I thought it was, flowing with soft waves past the small hill I had situated myself on.

But soon, I was offered an opportunity to know myself again, to remember how to feel, to remember those who cared for me-

The only catch was to have to see him again. See him for the rest of time.

I declined. I shut myself off. I tried to escape their offer. I hid, but I was never hidden. I was the wild boar in the hunt this time. Eventually the offer would become the only thing on my mind. The silence and solemnity of this limbo was infuriating me. The ones who had propositioned me this offer, this goddamn offer were making my afterlife extremely difficult. Asphodel Meadows had become Tartarus.

I accepted.

And now, I, wretched soul, am forced, by the means of my then forgotten death, to watch him. Watch him, as closely as Diana on a midnight hunt. Watch him, protect him with all the power I have- had. I had.

Had is the implied word.

He comes and goes, focusing on his steps as if they were all his life depended on. Walk down Unter-den-Linden, get to your classes in time, try to not to pass out from exhaustion as the professor drones on about the difference between Plutarch and Petrarch to an ignorant student who confused those two very different beings with each other. He should have been amused at such a squabble, but lately, his eyelids have been heavier than the stones in Cronus’s stomach. He was declining in both school and health.

I was going to be the reason of the decline. I was going to be his downfall.

I wish I could take back the offer, return to my days the meadows, but it was too enticing. I wish I had never known that my lost memory would lead to him again, to see him in such a low, despairing state. I wish I hadn’t been thinking to want to remember. I wish I hadn’t been thinking to need to remember all, all, all that I had lost. I wish I never had to be reminded about a foe whom I could never see but yet could feel.

For a moment, I felt happiness, if that’s would you would call it, in my heart. I felt peace. I felt as if he was here, with me.

When I first remembered those nights in the Gendarmerie, those long summer days in Potsdam, those smiles you had, those beautiful smiles when we would discuss theories about your favourite sonnets, when I first remembered you, it was as if I had tasted ambrosia on my lips. It felt as if you were truly there, with me.

But then realization shook. You weren’t there. That plastic bottle rolling out of my hands, your panicked cries, never, _never-_ Never getting to say goodbye to you.

I was such a fool. Why did I let my foe control me? I always said that ever since I left him, I was the master of my own fate. I thought, I, poor Orpheus ,could cheat Hades! Oh…what a fool, what an idiot am I. And you, I had promised you I would always be there, but you vanished before my eyes. I deserved it.

Eurydice, come back to me. I’ll play anything you’d like.

 _No, no._ That is not why I have regained my memory. No. You aren’t allowed to come back to me yet. Not yet. He had such dreams and ambitions. It can’t end now. I have to keep him going, keep him going strong. I can’t be selfish when now I’m worth nothing. Worth less than the sacrifice Prometheus offered to Zeus.

He’s the only thing that made me have worth when I was alive. I need to keep him alive no matter how much he protests. How much I protest.

~*~


End file.
